- Hi everyone, it's Jonathan from Ars Technica, and today we're here with this: Aston Martin's DB11. It's quite an important car for the company. It's the first car from their new second century plan, which is meant to take Aston Martin into the 21st century. It's an almost ground-up design, so they've moved from their old VH platform, which underpinned pretty much all of their cars for the last sort of ten, fifteen years, with this new aluminum composite light-weight structure. It has a basically all new twin turbo V12 under the hood that makes 600 horsepower and about 560 foot-pounds of torque. Thanks to a technology sharing agreement with Mercedes Benz, it has some pretty advanced technology inside, kind of certainly a league above what Aston Martin had done before. The car features some extremely clever aerodynamics at the front and the back to move air around to kind of keep the car stuck to the ground and make it a little bit more fuel-efficient. And it's basically what James Bond drives in the 21st century. The DB7 was designed by Marek Reichman and it looks instantaneously recognizable as an Aston Martin. It has you know that kind of classic shark's mouth grill, the same long bonnet, kind of heavy haunch profile. This is probably Aston Martin's most technologically-advanced car right now, and some of that is in evidence in the body work. So, this is all carbon fiber and composite body panels but it does some quite clever things with the air, some of which Aston Martin have learnt from their racing program. So, at the front, you'll see there's quite a large front splitter there, it obviously controls the air down low and they've done some interesting things with air flow. So they have these gills just behind the front wheels that basically suck air out from underneath the body and route it 'round the side, which is very important for front down-force, and then at the rear, they have what Aston Martin calls its Aeroblade, which is actually a gap. So the air gets sucked up through here and then gets channeled down, basically underneath the back of the car, and then gets routed up through this little vent at the back which is sort of a hidden spoiler, again, that helps push the car down low onto the ground. So, it's not just a pretty shape, it's also a functional one, too. Under the hood, pretty much everything is all new as well. This car uses 5.2 liter, twin turbo V12, which Aston Martin built almost from the ground-up for this car. It doesn't use direct-injection so it's still regular kind of port-injection. Aston Martin say they're unsure where gasoline particulate filters are gonna go, which is why they left that technology off, but otherwise it's still quite clever. It's twin-scroll turbochargers. It does cylinder deactivation so that, you know, half of the engine can shut down for better fuel economy on long runs. It makes 600 horsepower, 561 foot-pounds of torque. All of that is sent just to the rear wheels. A 600 hp rear-wheel-drive car is probably about the limit you need on the street, maybe a little bit more. It uses torque-vectoring through the brakes, so like an electronic limited-slip differential where when you go into a turn, instead of having a traditional mechanical limited-slip dif., the car will brake one of the wheels on the inside, the wheel on the inside of the turn to help it rotate. It has some pretty clever advanced traction control and stability control, again, to keep that 600 hp manageable on the road. As I've discovered the last few days driving this, if you have it in Sport or Sport Plus mode, in first or second gear, it will very happily spin the wheels. Those are probably best left for the track. So one thing it's important to point out is this is not really a sports car. It's much better to think of this as a grand tourer in the traditional sense. It's a 2+2, which means there's room for two adults in the front and two very small humans in the back, probably better if they don't have real legs. I think there's just enough room to fit someone my height behind me, if I'm in this seat. Anyone who's about six foot would not take kindly to being shoved in the back there. It's an Aston Martin which means it's all hand-built. There's all this lovely hand-stitched leather. There's beautiful craftsmanship on display. I think some of that contributes to the car's weight. Despite all the advanced construction, it's still a pretty heavy car at 4200 pounds. Again, you can see that Aston Martin has really joined the 21st century, so traditional gauges and dials are out. There's a TFT screen. Great steering wheel. Very good view out the front. The A pillars aren't too thick. The view out the back is also really rather good. That's the advantage of having the engine up front, as opposed to a mid-engined car. Something I do find kind of slightly irritating, the start button is here on the center, but it's also where they put the buttons for the transmission, so this uses an 8-speed CF automatic, and if you want to put it in Drive, you don't just select the paddle first, you have to actually remember to press D first, and if you want to get into Reverse the same. That can be a little confusing from time to time. There's not a huge amount of storage space on the inside of the car. I haven't been able to find, there may be a glove box here but if there is, it eludes me. We have a little cubby here that's motorized that you can keep your phone in, where you can plug your phone into the entertainment system. There's obviously, there's the trunk out back, which is not massive. You could fit some golf clubs in there or probably, you know, enough luggage for a weekend away, but you wouldn't really wanna move house in this car.